The Death-Defying Pepper Roux

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  “So he must have invented the message and not fished it out of the canal at all!” Chantal concluded.

  The supervisor was appalled. He did not care much for opera, but, to him, tampering with the official mail was high treason. He pointed to Exe and Why, but Chantal said that neither was the boy who had lied to her. So it had to be Zee.

  Luckily, the supervisor had no memory for names. “Zee. Zee!” he yelled, snapping his fingers at Exe and Why. “What was his real name?”

  Exe and Why looked at Chantal and the bricks on the floor. They recalled their roommate, the various ways he had turned bad news into good. Exe shrugged. Why shook his head. They could not remember Zee’s real name, they said. Chantal went away unsatisfied. Justice was not done.

  So it was Beowulf’s fault, really.

  Next day, Why was cycling past the shop of Gaspar the grocer when he thought of trash cans. Life in the loft apartment had come to revolve around Beowulf the dog. He and Exe had discovered just how deeply a hound can sink its teeth into a boy’s affections. They adored the beast—made it their life’s work to put food in Beowulf’s ever-empty stomach. So, seeing Gaspar’s trash cans, Why stopped to look and found, to his delight, a ham bone carved down to its gristle, three stale baguettes, some slimy brisket, and a broken jar of morello cherries. He was just loading these into a vegetable crate when Gaspar grabbed him from behind and propelled him into the outhouse, jamming the door shut.

  “Got you! Got you! Got you!” he bawled childishly through the rotten wood door. The next time Why heard voices, Gaspar was excitedly telling a police officer, “I knew it was him straight off—by the hat! He worked for me a while back—stole from me!”

  Why, who had spent an hour eating morello cherries and watching maggots crawl over a rank hambone, was in no mood to be arrested for something he had not done. Gaspar, who never looked at faces, thought Why was the boy who had robbed him, but Why was having none of it. “You mean Zee, that’s who you mean. His name’s Konstantin Kruppe, if you want to know, and he used to do telegrams, but he doesn’t now!” And Why thrust his armband in the grocer’s face.

  By the time they all got to the police station, the crime had shrunk, rather. On paper, the theft of five coconut-cream cakes did not look like a hanging offense. But the name Konstantin Kruppe was faintly familiar to the desk sergeant. His eye drifted to the wall of peeling wanted posters.

  WANTED

  KONSTANTIN KRUPPE

  (aged 19 years)

  Escaped felon.

  REWARD PAYABLE

  for information leading to recapture.

  Such notices are never updated: They accumulate. Prisoners are caught, join the Foreign Legion, escape the country—maybe even die in hospital beds in some nearby town. But the misleading wanted notice stays on the police station wall for years after.

  “This Kruppe character—he’s a menace, you know,” he told Why. “Escaped from a chain gang. String of convictions. You know him by sight. If any of you telegram boys spot him in the street—”

  “Telegraph operatives,” said Why, pointing to his armband.

  “There’s a reward,” said the sergeant.

  And there it was. A month before, chain gang or no chain gang, “pepper” or no “pepper,” they would not have delivered up their ex-friend to the law for love or hard cash. But Beowulf cost a fortune to feed. They had responsibilities. So the idea of a reward had them cycling the streets in the early morning and after work at night, scouring those parts of the city where a criminal on the run might turn up. They studied every face they passed on the pavement, hoping for a glimpse of Konstantin Kruppe. They wanted that reward. If they found him, it would be the end of the line for Zee.

  Meanwhile, Pepper and Yvette Roche filled their apartment so full of Christmas decorations that children from up and down the rue Méjeunet came to see. Pepper (who liked to make people happy) drew the curtains shut, lit candles, and called it a “magic grotto.” He told the children stories—first the ones he remembered from his father’s library but then ones of his own inventing. They tasted rather soapy—stories are only lies with a plot, after all—but he could not see the harm. He told them of sea monsters and pirate treasure, of rainbow-colored lemurs who stole from trash cans, and of fiery flying chariots—adventures so exciting that the little girls squealed and shivered and chewed one anothers’ braids.

  Unfortunately, these happy children were not a paying audience, and all the Christmas baubles, when they were finally packed and delivered, paid just 237 francs.

  “Maybe Big Sal will let us pay in installments,” said Yvette doubtfully.

  “But this money’s for the rent!” Pepper was shocked. He was sure there were more important debts to pay off before Roche’s gambling debts.

  “If we don’t pay the rent, the landlord will only send in the bailiffs,” said Yvette. “If we don’t pay Big Sal, he’ll send those men again to beat in your head. Anyway….” She seemed to be of two minds about whether to go on. “Anyway, I paid the rent already. That’s to say, a friend of mine did. Paid the rent.”

  Pepper was even more astonished. Yvette had changed, true, since her dead husband’s homecoming: Her skin was clearer, her hair shiny and combed. Her lips no longer flaked (except when she was eating croissants, like now), and she was not so thin. She even smiled sometimes—even spoke and went outdoors. But he had never realized she had friends. Suddenly he remembered all those romances in his father’s library. “Oh!” he exclaimed delightedly. “Do you have a lover, then?”

  The croissant exploded. Peas skittered across the table. Yvette coughed. The cough became a laugh—a high, bright, sunny, ringing laugh the like of which Pepper had never heard before. Not even at home in Bois-sous-Clochet. “And me a married woman? La!” she said, sweeping peas and crumbs into a pile with the sides of both hands, trying to make a serious face.

  Pepper was disappointed. He knew he was ignorant for fourteen—being kept home from school and everything—but a lover would have been a big help to Yvette. After Pepper was dead.

  He put on the cap and shirt that made him feel most like Claude Roche and pocketed the 237 francs. “I’ll take this to Big Sal now. In case I don’t come back, I think you ought to know: I have life insurance.” Saying it made him feel older, less of a green boy.

  After he had gone, Yvette searched his belongings again and found the life insurance. She did not laugh at finding it. In fact, for quite a long time she stood at the window and cried.

  Big Sal ran a gambling den in a cellar under the Cheval Cheveux hairdressers in the rue de la Ravette. He sat at the bar now, underneath the coil of the cellar steps, beside his moll, a blonde who was busy opening new packs of playing cards with her long red fingernails. Big Sal was unimpressed by the boy in the sailor’s cap and overlarge shirt.

  “Where’s Roche?” he said.

  “I’m Roche,” said Pepper, and laid the money down on the mirror-tiled bar.

  “Didn’t know he had a son.”

  “He doesn’t. I’m Claude Roche.”

  “Well, you’ve got noive. Coming here. Seeing what you done to my boys.”

  The protester in Pepper protested: “What? Did I graze their shoes with my face?”

  “And paying me back with dough you took off my own collectors? Funny man, ain’t yuh!”

  “I took—?”

  It was Little America. Everyone at Big Sal’s spoke with an American accent—spoke French, but with an American accent. Pepper, who had never met an American, thought they must have their mouths full of food.

  Big Sal’s bartender rounded the end of the bar, making a noise with his cocktail shaker like an angry rattlesnake. “Yuh flattened ’em, that’s what yuh did. Yuh flattened ’em. With a baby carriage.”

  The lights overhead flickered ominously.

  Pepper could not imagine who had flattened Big Sal’s thugs. But he picked up his envelope off the bar again: He would sooner pay the next month’s rent with his hard-ea
rned francs; the landlord at least swore in a proper French accent. The envelope was spattered with water drops—perhaps the cocktail shaker was leaking.

  Big Sal snapped his fingers. The bouncer climbed the stairs to lock the street door. The light socket fizzed.

  “What’s he doing here, Sal baby?” asked Sal’s moll. She was wearing sunglasses, which meant she could not see the cards or very much of what was occurring.

  The bouncer was in a tussle with a newcomer at the door—“Let me in, you fool!”—and the resident stripper pushed past him, muffled up (despite the heat) in a full-length fur coat. “What’s going on?”

  “Just getting set to kill someone,” said the bartender.

  Pepper looked upward, thinking there could be no birds of ill omen in a basement. But there it was, sure enough: a raven-shaped stain spreading darkly across the ceiling. Big Sal snatched the envelope out of Pepper’s hand and looked inside.

  “Well, look at that. The guy’s here to gamble! Right? Can’t stay away! Am I right?”

  “Addict,” said Sal’s moll, chewing. “Should I deal the cards, Sal honey?”

  “I only know pairs,” said Pepper, not liking the way things were going. He fixed his thoughts on the life insurance and determined to see things through to the bitterest of ends. On the whole he would have preferred to be assassinated by angels. At least they operated above ground and probably spoke French without American accents.

  Big Sal was amused, intrigued, possibly even drunk. He pushed a pack of cards into Pepper’s hand and watched him deal them facedown on the bar. “I don’t know this one,” said Sal’s moll. “How come he don’t play poker, this guy?”

  “There’s another good reason to kill him,” said the bouncer.

  “How d’you play it?” asked the bartender.

  “K.K.! It’s little K.K., isn’t it!” exclaimed Mièle Rosette, slipping out of her fur coat and knocking off Pepper’s cap so as to ruffle his hair. “What’s my little K.K. doing here, Sal?”

  “You know this guy?”

  “Sure! He’s a telegram boy! Konstance Krunch or some mouthful the like of that.”

  “Says he’s Claude Roche.”

  “That pig? No way. He’s long gone.”

  The staff of Big Sal’s were slow to pick up the rules of pairs, they being more used to blackjack and poker. But soon they were all gathered around the bar—waiters, a bouncer, a pianist, a moll, and the cloakroom girl—picking out two cards at a time, cursing or congratulating themselves.

  “Tell you what,” said Big Sal, flapping Pepper’s money. “I’ll just call this a fine for what you did to my boys.”

  Clouds of red mustered behind Pepper’s eyes. “I didn’t do a thing to your ‘boys.’ Yvette and I earned that making Christmas decorations!”

  “Ah! Sweet!” mewed Sal’s moll sentimentally. “I love Christmas!”

  “I heard Claude Roche was dead,” said Mièle Rosette loudly and clearly.

  “I got a pair!” said the bartender.

  “He hit my boys with a baby carriage,” said Sal, slapping down his palm in the middle of the bar, scattering the cards. “Kill him anyway.”

  Then the lights went out.

  Water began to gush down through the ceiling roses, along the wires and onto the bulbs, causing short-circuiting. In the darkness, the sound of rushing water was terrifying. Bottles of liquor and the glass lights behind the bar fell with a crash. The playing cards washed off the bar. Pepper felt something brush against him, slick as a wet otter, as Mièle swept her coat up out of the wet. “Get out of here, kid. You got friends waiting,” she said in an undertone so soft, he thought he had imagined it.

  Pepper felt his way toward the stairs as more and more stalactites of water streamed down the wiring, cold and startling in the dark. So close to the sea, it was easy to imagine that the tide had somehow overreached itself, was pouring into the cellar, and would quickly fill it to the brim. So the others too were making for the only exit, competing for use of the stairs that wound up and over the bar, toward the street door. So Pepper climbed up the outside of the banister.

  Not for nothing did Big Sal hold sway over the gambling underworld of Aigues Mortes. He knew it was not the sea pouring into his swanky premises. “I’ll kill those bastards upstairs!” he raged, groping his way instead toward the bar takings and the jacket with his wallet in it. A lump of plaster fell from the ceiling and caught him between the shoulder blades.

  “I locked it! It’s locked! Just wait, will you!” said the bouncer, fumbling at the padlock, but someone jostled him in the dark, and he dropped the key. Water and lamplight were pouring now through the gaping hole in the ceiling: Street lighting was one thing the hair-dressing salon enjoyed that the basement nightclub didn’t. The bouncer barged against the door with one shoulder but bounced back, lost his balance, and fell down the stairs, dislodging the bartender and a flurry of curses. Leaning out from the banister as far as possible, Pepper felt around with one foot for the surface of the bar and lowered himself onto it. Big Sal, on hands and knees, was feeling his way up the stairs, crawling over his fallen staff members. When he reached street level, there was a bang and a flash as he fired a gun at the padlock. Only then did he look back and see the shape of little Claude Roche, arms stretched upward, rising through the new hole in the ceiling. Big Sal fired again, but the bullet hit the wall mirror, which disintegrated. Shards of noise cut ribbons in everyone’s hearing.

  Someone in the room above was pulling Pepper upward, gripping his wrists so tightly that the blood vessels swelled in the backs of his hands. Someone down below grabbed his shoes, but he slid his feet free and continued to rise, into the street-level salon of Cheval Cheveux. The noise of gushing taps swilled away any other sound. The torrent of water falling in his face stopped him from seeing or breathing. When the hands let go and deposited him facedown on the flooded floor, the dim moonlight showed him nothing but six silver waterfalls cascading over the sides of six sinks. Beyond the glass shop door were the agitated silhouettes of several men.

  The gunshots had drawn everyone down from Le Petit Caporal bar above the hairdresser’s. They were outside now, paddling, discussing why water was pouring under the door and who had fired the shots. When Pepper crawled to the door, unbolted it, and tumbled outside into the street, an extra surge of water washed over their feet.

  “YOU!” said Fléau, the recruitment sergeant.

  Pepper looked back into the salon for the faceless someone who had pulled him up—but the shop was dark, and the sergeant was shouting earsplittingly about deserters and dereliction of duty, pulling out his service revolver. His latest herd of drunken recruits milled about, getting in his way. One was busy breaking open the door of the basement poker club, because he could hear people trapped inside.

  Pepper ran. After him came the French Foreign Legion; the bouncer, bartender, and waiters from Big Sal’s poker club; and a thin film of water slowly spreading like blood from the scene of a murder. He ran as he had run once from Roche, and even Roche’s name chased him along the street—“Roche! Roche, you little bastard!” Stone chippings peppered the back of his legs as the sergeant’s bullets hit the pavement. Big Sal aimed higher but was foiled by Mièle Rosette swinging her wet fur coat at his pistol and shouting shrilly, “But it’s only little K.K.!”

  At one point Pepper almost collided with a cyclist—“Sorry! Sorry!”—and realized that his own bike was lost to him, still parked outside Big Sal’s. It was on foot that he descended the steep stone steps, threaded the narrow alleyways, crossed the canal bridges and ankle-breaking cobblestones. On foot, in only his socks, each lane was longer, each hill steeper. But minute by minute he put more distance between himself and his pursuers. Soon the loudest sound behind him was a soft jingling and the softer hiss of tires on stone. Pepper glanced back and saw the cyclist flickering in and out of the lamplight, doggedly following him through the small intestine of the night city.

  It was Why.

>   “Why!…Why!…Bike!…Lend!” He was so out of breath that he could barely speak. “Bike! Please! They’re after me!”

  Why halted at a distance. “Who is?”

  “Everyone! Don’t know! Everyone!”

  “Where are you aiming to get? I could take you,” said Why, but came no closer.

  Pepper gasped for breath, hands on his knees. Running had left him no time to think. Where was he going? Home to an address Big Sal knew? And endanger Yvette?

  “Could I hide out with you? At the loft?”

  Why considered this. “Yes,” he said. “Good idea.”

  So Pepper mounted up behind Why, astride the back wheel, his heels scuffing the road. The noise of starlings had long since been snuffed out by dark. It let him hear his pursuers, baying through the alleyways and the winding streets, as determined as ever to kill him. There was no moon. As they passed by the Constance Tower, Pepper looked up; but he could not see the flapping figure of a woman on the roof, the one who persecuted him so with her watching, watching, watching.

  Suddenly he slid off the back of the bike.

  “Where are you going?” cried Why, jamming on the brakes. He sounded truly concerned, and Pepper was touched.

  “To ask her. Before they get me. I’m going to ask why.”

  It is hard to turn a bike around on cobblestones—the wheels jam between the stones. By the time Why had changed direction, Konstantin Kruppe was at the far end of the side street, starting to climb the wooden scaffolding around the tower. He climbed as easily as a gecko up a wall, and the shadows swallowed all but the occasional flicker of shirt or hand.

  Mouth open, head back, Why watched and held his breath. The noise of creaking wood, the slight tremor of the crude wooden scaffolding, made the whole building seem to be shifting uneasily on its base. Somewhere a dog barked. Reminded of Beowulf, Why turned and cycled away. He had been going to bicycle Pepper right to the doors of the police station, delivering him like a telegram into the hands of the law. As it was, the best he could do was report the whereabouts of the escaped prisoner Konstantin Kruppe and earmark the thousand-franc reward. As he told the desk sergeant, all the police had to do was wait at the foot of the Constance Tower until the villain came down.